The main thing that needs disruption right now is conglomeration.
The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's neither the first nor the last chat app, i believe - so how would you say the world changed? (note that i don't use whatsapp and am not all that familiar with it. mostly i'm aware of it due to an interest in erlang.)
No VOIP system before Whatsapp reached the threshold of general usability for the unwashed masses (a complex matter conflating voice quality, software distribution, contact discovery, network effect, data usage, resilience, system load etc.). Facebook and Viber came close but failed. Before Whatsapp, my friends in various African countries and their correspondents spent sometimes hundreds of Euros a month in voice co…
Saving people money != changing the world.
The telegraph changed the world, so did cellphones. Cheaper messaging or HDTV did not.
The difference is really one of capability not minor quality improvements. Otherwise you get into things like calling every single new generation of graphics cards as revolutionary not evolutionary.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
No VOIP system before Whatsapp reached the threshold of general usability for the unwashed masses (a complex matter conflating voice quality, software distribution, contact discovery, network effect, data usage, resilience, system load etc.). Facebook and Viber came close but failed. Before Whatsapp, my friends in various African countries and their correspondents spent sometimes hundreds of Euros a month in voice co…
Saving people money != changing the world. The telegraph changed the world, so did cellphones. Cheaper messaging or HDTV did not. The difference is really one of capability not minor quality improvements. Otherwise you get into things like calling every single new generation of graphics cards as revolutionary not evolutionary.
There is a demand elasticity threshold effect. When people traveled overseas, the consensus was that they were out of reach. Cheap Internet access broke that consensus for text & images. Whatsapp broke it for synchronous voice. People can now maintain close relationships internationally. It did not happen linearly with international voice prices decrease: it happened suddenly with the combination of the cost reaching zero with accepted usability.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#34Partly (even mostly), this is a rant about hyperbole and cliche.
I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard title "President" was selected specifically for its understated connotations (as opposed to pomous titles like prime minister). It escalated.
A lot of the tech cliches start as understated ways of being hyperpolic. Paradigm a fairly an abstract term. Disrupt is an understated term for revolutionize. But when they reach ciche status, they get annoying.
There's an art to understated but ambituous, and an appeal to it. Musk pulls it off at times.
I was about to accuse America for this and quote soft words and big sticks, but....that's an americanism ain't it? I dunno. I do think american tolerance for hyperactive positivity is in play somewhere.
All that said, disruption deos happens, but is hindsight it usually seems like a technological or societal disruption, not a company led thing. I mean, news has certainly been disrupted.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saving people money != changing the world. The telegraph changed the world, so did cellphones. Cheaper messaging or HDTV did not. The difference is really one of capability not minor quality improvements. Otherwise you get into things like calling every single new generation of graphics cards as revolutionary not evolutionary.
There is a demand elasticity threshold effect. When people traveled overseas, the consensus was that they were out of reach. Cheap Internet access broke that consensus for text & images. Whatsapp broke it for synchronous voice. People can now maintain close relationships internationally. It did not happen linearly with international voice prices decrease: it happened suddenly with the combination of the cost reaching…
Whatsapp started in 2009, you could do free voice chat internationally well before that.
Arguably they 'won' because Skype was sold to Microsoft in 2009 creating a huge opening. But, it hardly changed the world even if it did save some people quite a bit of money.
PS: I suspect people will have the same conversation in 10 years about a company created around 2014 when Whatsapp was sold.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#36Also, "changing the world". Sorry, your messaging app isn't doing that.
Well, in the most trivial and banal sense possible, it is: there's now another message app that wasn't there before. I tried to unpack why this phrase is overused. I think it is because it's one of a few things that both sounds lofty when used in a pitch, and wiil always be true. It's also a great dodge of considering the type of change (changing the world for the better or worse?) or of that change's magnitude (subs…
I only really see it used on potential employees, rather than potential customers. It sounds better than the more-correct 'come and sacrifice your best years on this pointless app that might make me rich but probably will crash and burn like all the others'.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#37Please don't put all companies in the same basket. There's a big difference between Instagram and Google.
Facebook and Google make most of their money from ads. That's a big similarity. I'd even say that they are each others biggest competitor.
Their business model has NOTHING to do with the legitimacy of a "disruption" claim.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#38VC's respond to marketing. Founders use advertising language. Engineers annoyed.
Words mean things, but words also have a context. execute means something different to a programmer than it does to a death row inmate. It's nice to imagine a world where there is only one true language that is sufficient for every case, but that's wrong.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#39Partly (even mostly), this is a rant about hyperbole and cliche. I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard title "President" was selected specifically for its understated connotations (as opposed to pomous titles like prime minister). It escalated. A lot of the tech cliches start as understated ways of being hyperpolic. Paradigm a fairly an abstract term. Disrupt is an understated term for revolutionize. But when…
If we're talking about how startups and journalists use it, then yes (and since English is what English speaking people speak, then that usage is a definition of the word).
But "disrupt" has a technical meaning, and pretty clearly defined by Christensen - a product/service that's worse for the main use of that category, but has other qualities valued by other customers for some other use; over time it improves, and while the category leader also improves it eventually "overshoots" what people need, whereas this new thing becomes acceptable AND it has those other qualities - at that point, it is dramatically replaced by the newcomer, completing the process of "disruption". Seminal example: 8 inch disk drives had (and have) greater capacity; but are bigger and less convenient, and a smaller diskdrive has enough capacity. Same thing happened to 5.25", 3.5", those tiny laptop ones, and now SSD. Same pattern. It's an industry/category event, not a company event... but some companies benefit from it.
But it's not very predictive (even thoigh the pattern seems legit in hindsight); Christensen himself famously dismissed the iPhone with about as much aplomb as Cmdrtaco dismissed the iPod. TTBF, while smartphones are disrupting PCs, it's not that absolute; about as much as netbooks did. PCs are still going strong for games, development and business. It was a different story when PCs disrupted workstations.
Re: The problem, really, is this thing called “disruption”
#40Partly (even mostly), this is a rant about hyperbole and cliche. I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard title "President" was selected specifically for its understated connotations (as opposed to pomous titles like prime minister). It escalated. A lot of the tech cliches start as understated ways of being hyperpolic. Paradigm a fairly an abstract term. Disrupt is an understated term for revolutionize. But when…
If we're talking about how startups and journalists use it, then yes (and since English is what English speaking people speak, then that usage is a definition of the word). But "disrupt" has a technical meaning, and pretty clearly defined by Christensen - a product/service that's worse for the main use of that category, but has other qualities valued by other customers for some other use; over time it improves, and w…
True.
It started with a fairly specific pathway to "revolutionize". Thus always with cliches. They start as meaningful terms, with some interesting insights rolled in. Then literally becomes literally: People who don't understand the joke still use it.